In The Beginning Was The Plot.....And The Plot Thickened! Adventures on a Lancashire Allotment & Miscellaneous Musings.

20 June 2006

Midsummer Moments

The cooler weather and rain has been a blessing and is giving me a break from watering.

Most things are pretty much established now and aregrowing well. The broad beans, tomatoes and sweetcorn look particularly fine and, touch wood, the dreaded black fly seems to be keeping a low profile for the moment.

I am pleased to say that most of the scurvy has cleared up now and I am able to get my hands mucky again though I have to be careful and smother them with emmolients to try to prevent it returning.

Today we be mostly 'arvesting strawberries and radish and lettuce and it do be so pleasing I am going to put them all in one sandwich and eat it neat so I am. Was getting very jealous of all the more southerly plotters who have been munching their own lettucees for weeks if not months now. The asparagus lettuce is very nice but I think my second sowing of it has been ruined as I left the seed tray out and it got thoroughly swamped by the rain.....der...should've sown it straight into the ground and that's the last of that seed I think. Oh well.

Was reading Seed News last night and I must confess I did not realise quite how much of a badness it was to use F1 Hybrid seeds. Now I have been shown the light, verily I vouchsafe unto thee, tho I be tempted 40 days and 40 nights, never again will I be seduced into suchwickedness no matter how tender, succulent, juicy, long, short, fat, hairy, smooth or disease resistant or damned cheap the product shall be amen..... three hail marys and four alfalfas.

When firms like Monsanto start taking over seed companies.....yech! tis time to revolt neh?maybe long past time?

The eggs are from the very nice man further down the plots with the er....chickens. They were so warm and fresh and delicous but clearly they have been genetically engineered because they are making Ben's legs grow twice as fast as is normal for a seven year old.

After he'd stuffed me down the water barrel I thought it jolly decent of him to let me know that help was on the way and would be here in an hour or two and would I like a rocket sandwich to keep me going?

3 comments:

Yeah, I read that article in Seed News too and it is alarming how much of a stranglehold the seed companies have over what we grow.

It's a thorny issue though because some plants (e.g. sweetcorn) are genuinely far superior as F1 hybrids, while for others (like tomatoes) there's no advantage in F1 hybrids at all. It varies hugely with the genetic makeup of different veg.

One consolation is that F1 hybrids are not inherently bad, it's just the way that seed companies have exploited them. There's nothing to stop you making your own hybrids and bypassing the big seed firms altogether.